I charged $150 for a 16x20 watercolor last week and I want to crawl out of my skin about it
Okay so I'm still pretty new to pricing my own work without a professor or a gallery telling me what to do and I think I massively undershot this one. A friend-of-a-friend reached out wanting a custom piece, her cat, sitting in a sunny windowsill, very specific reference photo she sent, gorgeous light honestly I was excited about it. I quoted $150 for a 16x20 watercolor which is like... insane when I actually stop and think about it. That's easily 15-20 hours of work when you factor in the back-and-forth and the sketching and the masking and the layering and fixing the thing I inevitably mess up. I did the math after I sent the message and it came out to like $8 an hour and I just sat there staring at my phone.
I'm not mad at her she was thrilled with the price obviously lol. I'm mad at me. I keep doing this thing where I price based on what I think someone will pay instead of what the work is actually worth. And I KNOW better. I had a whole class on this. But when it's real and there's a real person on the other end asking nicely I just fold and throw out a number that feels "fair" to them and not to me.
Anyway she's picking it up tomorrow and I'm gonna smile and take the cash and then I'm gonna spend the whole evening updating my rate sheet so I don't do this again. For the fifth time. 🫠
Anyone else have a number they immediately regretted the second it left their mouth?
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I know this feeling. The moment after you name a number and it sits in the air and you realise you've just valued your time below minimum wage.
The thing is, $150 for a 16x20 watercolour with that level of detail, custom reference, specific light, a living creature that people have feelings about, that's not a painting, that's a commission with emotional stakes. You're not selling pigment on paper, you're selling the fact that you got her cat's particular expression right.
I did this for years. Undershot because I was afraid the number would scare them off. And sometimes it does. But the ones who stay after a fair price are better clients anyway.
Next time, try tripling it and see how it sits in your stomach. If it makes you nervous but not sick, that's probably the right number.
Ugh the "emotional stakes" part hit me so hard because YES. Like it's not just a painting, it's her CAT. If I mess up the eye shape she's gonna be polite about it but I'll KNOW she's disappointed. And I sat there with my calculator like "okay $10 an hour... plus materials..." and somehow talked myself into $150 being reasonable?? While I was painting it I kept thinking about how much I'd charge to do it again and I was like oh no. Oh no no no.
Did you eventually start quoting higher and just... sitting through the silence? Or did people surprise you?
Now that's the truth right there. That part about being afraid the number would scare 'em off, I know that one down in my bones. Been there so many times I lost count.
Honey, here's what I learned the hard way. When you lowball yourself, it don't just cheat you. It cheats the person who gets the work too. They can feel when you half-believed in what you were doing. A fair price says "this matters and I'm the one who can do it right." That's a gift to everybody.
And you're absolutely right about the emotional weight. That cat's not just a cat. That's family. That's the spot in the window she'd watch every morning with her coffee. You're stitching memory into paper. That's worth something.